The Nightingale Sings

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘An annulment, fine,’ Josephine whispered. ‘But not the police. I mean it. Even if he did go to gaol, when he got out he’d come after me. He’s totally mad, really mad. He is right off any given map. I know. And as for marrying him, I must have been mad. I can’t explain it, really. It was like being hypnotized. It was like being under some kind of awful spell.’

  ‘We’ll talk about this when you’re yourself, darling, OK? At the moment you’re going to need all your strength to get better.’

  ‘There’s really nothing more to talk about, Mums.’

  ‘You bet there is,’ Cassie said grimly.

  * * *

  On her way out, having left Josephine in a deep sedative-induced sleep, Cassie asked when she could take her daughter home. She was told that they would need to keep Josephine in and under observation for at least another two or three days, but provided there were no unforeseen complications or as yet undiscovered injuries there was no reason Josephine could not go home after that.

  ‘Fine,’ Cassie told the nurse. ‘Then please tell my daughter I’ll be in to see her first thing tomorrow, and that all being well we’ll have her back home for the weekend. And thank you. I mean that. For all that you’ve done,’ she added, but the nurse had already moved on.

  True to her word, Cassie flew out of London with Josephine late afternoon on Friday. Mattie met them at Dublin airport in Jack Madigan’s chauffeur-driven S class Mercedes, laid on specially for the occasion.

  ‘It was all I could do to persuade Jack not to buy an ambulance specially,’ Mattie said, once they had Josephine comfortably settled in the back. ‘So what’s the damage, sis? Any plans for the return match yet?’

  ‘Don’t make me laugh, Matt,’ Josephine pleaded through bruised-lips. ‘Not yet, at least.’

  ‘If you thought I was mad, Ma, you wait till you see Jack Madigan,’ Mattie said as the car pulled away. ‘If I were you, sis, I’d tell that husband of yours to change his identity and his nationality, unless he wants to end up in a deep hole in a field somewhere in Roscommon.’

  ‘Let’s not dwell on such unsavoury matters, shall we?’ Cassie said with finality, sliding the glass partition shut between themselves and the driver. ‘We’ll draw a line under this, just until we know more, that is.’

  During the first few weeks of Josephine’s recuperation, Cassie spent a good deal of time with young Gareth Plunkett helping prepare their case against her bloodstock insurers. He was a frequent visitor to the house, since given Cassie’s phenomenal workload now that the Flat season was beginning to get into full swing it was usually easier to get round the table out at Claremore than it was for Cassie to dash into Dublin at a moment’s notice. He was an exceptionally nice young man, very clever without being smart and naturally funny without ever being facetious, something Cassie always found irritating.

  ‘Are you married, Gareth?’ she found herself asking him suddenly one day as they broke from working to have coffee.

  ‘No, I’m not married, Mrs Rosse,’ Gareth replied, putting down his coffee cup beside his wonderfully neat notebook. ‘I was to be married, but in the words of the song, somebody stole my girl.’

  ‘Your best friend, no doubt.’

  ‘Worse,’ Gareth sighed. ‘My father.’

  Cassie looked up from reading her latest brief. ‘Your father? That’s every son’s nightmare, surely?’

  ‘Doubly so, Mrs Rosse. He went and married her.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Cassie said sympathetically. ‘There’s not a lot you can say to that, is there?’

  ‘I can tell you I certainly didn’t find a thing,’ Gareth agreed. ‘In fact even now when I come to think of it I’m speechless. Talk about not losing a daughter but gaining a son. I not only lost a fiancé, I lost a father as well.’

  ‘You poor fellow,’ Cassie said, trying to imagine such a thing. ‘Sometimes when I hear things like that, I wonder whether family life is all it’s cracked up to be.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ Gareth agreed. ‘But then there are families and there are families. If I may say so, I wouldn’t have thought that you need have much to fear in such directions.’

  Cassie nearly told him then. She longed to tell him because she longed to tell someone just how terrible the past months had been as far as her own family relationships had gone. She had refused to tell Joel because he had enough causes for concern of his own, and although she had told Theodore as much as he needed to know about Mattie and his doubts, she had not told him everything because again she had thought it unfair since in a way Theo was still trying to rebuild his own life. In the end she did not unburden herself on Gareth either, simply because she thought that would just be plain unfair, particularly now she had just learned that he had his own particular misery.

  ‘Well, let’s hope you meet someone really special,’ she offered instead. ‘Someone who’ll help make good all that hurt.’

  ‘I think I already have, Mrs Rosse,’ Gareth said a little shyly, ‘but now we really ought to get back to business. After all, you’re paying for this time.’

  He was back again the very next day, but this time after business hours. Cassie found him standing in the hallway when she came into the house after evening stables, dressed not as he normally was for work but informally in a good pair of blue jeans, a cream-coloured polo shirt and a worn but well-cut suede bomber jacket. He was also clasping a small bunch of spring freesias.

  ‘Gareth?’ she said, puzzled and suddenly worried when she saw the flowers. ‘There’s nothing wrong, I hope? I mean, we don’t have a meeting scheduled, surely? Not at this time of day.’

  ‘No, of course not, Mrs Rosse,’ Gareth replied, blushing slightly. ‘I didn’t know I was coming out here myself, until—’

  ‘Until I asked him,’ came a voice from the stairs above both of them.

  ‘Jo?’ Cassie looked up and saw her daughter coming down the stairway, still with the aid of her walking stick, but freshly made up and looking well on the way to recovery. ‘I didn’t know you two knew each other.’

  ‘We don’t. That is, we didn’t,’ Gareth offered.

  ‘But we do now,’ Jo said, arriving at the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘Your daughter was outside the house yesterday when I arrived, Mrs Rosse,’ Gareth explained, smiling round at Josephine as she came to his side. ‘She was in the garden and we got talking—’

  ‘And Gareth asked me out,’ Josephine said impishly, looking now at the flowers in Gareth’s hand. ‘Are those for my mother?’

  Gareth looked nervously from mother to daughter. ‘Yes, yes of course,’ he said. ‘Mrs Rosse, I’m sorry – these are for you.’ He handed the freesias to Cassie who accepted them with a smile.

  ‘Thank you, Gareth. I simply love freesias. When Josephine was born her father filled our entire bedroom with them.’

  ‘I really should have asked you, I think, Mrs Rosse,’ Gareth continued in some confusion.

  ‘You should have asked my mother whether or not you should give her flowers?’ Josephine teased.

  ‘Whether or not I could ask her daughter out.’

  ‘I’m a bit past that stage, Mr Plunkett,’ Josephine said. ‘Anyway, supposing she’d said no?’

  ‘Then I would have respected your mother’s wishes.’

  Josephine sighed and smiled at the handsome young man. ‘Who ever said chivalry was dead, eh, Mums?’

  ‘Not me,’ Cassie returned with a smile, carefully unwrapping the cellophane from round the freesias. ‘So where are you two off to, Gareth? If you don’t mind my asking.’

  ‘Not at all, Mrs Rosse. I shall take her wherever she would like to go.’

  ‘It’s such a lovely spring evening, why don’t we drive down to Killiney and have dinner at the seafood restaurant?’ Josephine suggested. ‘Do you know the one I mean – Blakey’s, isn’t it?’

  ‘I know it,’ Gareth replied. ‘It’s owned and run by my Uncle Daniel, and if I may say so he’s a fair old cook.’

>   Cassie watched them drive away in Gareth’s old but immaculate red MGB sports into the fine spring evening, past where the mares and their newly born foals were being carefully shepherded out of the home paddocks to be led away and up into their stables for the night, past the racing yards and the loose school and away down the long drive towards the main gates until they disappeared from sight.

  ‘Please God,’ Cassie said to herself as she made her way towards the kitchen to put the sweet-smelling flowers in water. ‘Please God.’

  Then she took the flowers up to Josephine’s room where she put them by the bedside, where they had obviously been destined to go in the first place.

  A week later Cassie drove her daughter down to Kilkenny.

  ‘You might tell us where we’re going,’ Josephine wondered yet again as the burgeoning landscape passed in a blur of spring green past the car windows. ‘What is with all this secrecy?’

  ‘You’ll see,’ Cassie told her. ‘But remember, I meant what I said to you before we left. You are not to say one word of this to anyone. Not a soul.’

  ‘I know where this is,’ Josephine announced as Cassie turned the car up a long drive leading to a fine Georgian house. ‘This is where that friend of yours Peter Nugent lives. The eventing genius. I didn’t know you were into eventing.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘So why are we here?’

  ‘Wait and see.’

  ‘Please, Mums, I can’t bear it. It’s like being a little girl again. I know when you’re hiding something, so please, please tell me.’

  Cassie glanced round at her daughter and then pulled the car up in a small layby on the long drive under the budding chesnut trees. Beyond the paddocks which lay on either side of the drive several horses could be seen doing grid work in an outdoors ménage. The two of them watched the horses work for a moment in silence before Cassie spoke.

  She told her daughter everything that had happened up until now which was relevant to the scheme, and all that she intended to happen from this moment on. After she had finished Josephine stared at her mother. ‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’

  ‘I have never been more serious in my life.’

  ‘And you really think you can pull it off?’

  ‘No. No, I really think we can pull it off, Jo. You, Mattie and I will do it. The three of us will pull it off, with a little help from our friends.’ Then she started the car again and drove up the drive to initiate her stratagem.

  ‘The horse is remarkably well,’ Peter Nugent told them as they drove in his Range Rover across his cross country course to the nominated fences. ‘And not only is he well, he’s also one of the brightest chaps I’ve had the pleasure to work with. You only have to tell him something once and he’s got it. Furthermore, Cassie, although it’s early days, he still seems to have plenty of toe.’

  ‘Certainly he has. The monkey all but tanked off with me last time I rode him. Obviously your girl hasn’t had any problems or we’d have heard about them by now.’

  ‘Mo gets on with him fine, but Mo has her limitations,’ Peter replied. ‘And of course just as you said, the old boy won’t let anyone of my sex near him. Talk about Jekyll and Hyde. Right—’ Peter stopped the car and opened his door. ‘Perfect timing,’ he said. ‘Here they come now.’

  All three of them stood on the side of the hill on which the car had stipped, watching two horses canter up the slope towards them. One was a bright bay, a good strong eventing type who moved well enough but even at the canter was finding it hard work to keep up with the big black horse upsides him who was positively floating over the ground.

  ‘My God,’ Josephine whispered. ‘I’d forgotten his sheer power. And as for the way he moves – but you’re all mad. There isn’t a hope in hell.’

  ‘No negative thoughts, Jo,’ Cassie replied. ‘I told you. All you need is to get fit which won’t take you long. It’s not as if you stopped riding altogether.’

  ‘Hacking’s a long way from what you’re asking me to do.’

  ‘You were still race riding up to the end of last season,’ Cassie reminded her. ‘It won’t take you long to get fit again, once you’re fully mended. It never does. It’s just going to hurt a bit at first, that’s all. I should know. I talk from experience. Now then, Peter – is this the jump you had in mind?’

  Cassie deliberately walked away from Josephine to join Peter Nugent by the first of three large newly built fences which had been erected at intervals of about a hundred metres on a specially prepared strip of level grass.

  ‘These are the ones, Cassie,’ Peter confirmed, pushing the birch with his hands to demonstrate how tightly packed the fence was. ‘As you can see they’re a good four foot, with ground rails and another rail halfway up. We didn’t put top rails on because although we’d seen him flip over those fences on the schooling ground, these are altogether much more solid, rather like the French hurdles, rather like the ones at Auteuil, yes? And my own feeling was that if there were top rails and he hit one, knowing how bright the old horse is he might just go off the whole enterprise. Either that or start ballooning his obstacles which is not what we want either. Correct?’

  ‘Totally. And you haven’t put him at these yet.’

  ‘As agreed, we were waiting for you. After all, seeing is believing. OK, Mo!’ he called to the girl riding The Nightingale. ‘Show them the first fence, and then in your own time pop ’em over ’em!’

  ‘Alongsides, Mr Nugent?’ the girl asked as the two horses circled around them. ‘Or do you want Sam here to give us a lead?’

  ‘Alongsides, please, Mo! I doubt if you’d settle him in behind!’

  ‘She would,’ Cassie told Peter privately as the horses walked up to look at the first fence. ‘You can put him anywhere. But then he’s such a show-off he just might on the other hand start fooling about. So absolutely. Send them both at the first one together.’

  The three of them positioned themselves in a line halfway down the flight of jumps as the horses were turned away from the fence and trotted back a good hundred yards. Suddenly Cassie felt nervous, more nervous even than she had felt watching the horse on the day he won his first Derby. So much depended on the next few moments, whereas when the horse had lined up at Epsom, even though he was expected to win, Cassie had nothing to lose except her pride. But now, now if the house she was building in her dreams turned out to be made of straw she could face not just ruin but complete ignominy.

  As if sensing this, Josephine slipped her arm through Cassie’s and held it tight. ‘What exactly are we looking to see? Just so as I know.’

  ‘I can’t tell you exactly, Jo. All I can tell you is that if the horse has got it, we’ll know all right. You can bet on it.’

  Even as she spoke the two horses kicked off from the start, settling into a good steady gallop as they headed for the first of the three fences. As always The Nightingale had his head tucked down in his chest, his ears pricked and his bright eyes fixed on the solid looking black obstacle that lay in his path. There were no wings at the fences to guide the horses into their takeoff or to stop them running out and for one awful moment as the two animals shaped up at the first fence The Nightingale seemed about to duck out, causing both Cassie and Josephine to gasp in dismay.

  But it was only a check. The horse was in fact changing his legs in order to get his stride right which he did in plenty of time, taking off a full length earlier than his companion, who as a result of The Nightingale’s prodigious leap plunged at the fence. Had the animal not been such an experienced eventer he would have almost certainly fallen but instead he fiddled it, correcting his error just at the last moment, and although he pecked on landing somehow he managed to land on his feet and scamper away from the obstacle.

  But The Nightingale had flown. He had taken off a good ten feet in front of the fence, cleared it by another foot, and landed at least another eight feet beyond.

  Even more important, as he had landed he was already running on.


  ‘That’s what we wanted to see!’ Cassie exclaimed excitedly, turning to watch her horse attack the next fence. ‘He picked up the moment he touched down! That’s exactly what we wanted to see!’

  By the time The Nightingale had reached the second fence he had pulled himself three lengths clear, but Cassie wasn’t interested in distances. She knew Sam was an eventer, and even though he was an Advanced horse he could not be expected to be a match for a racehorse of The Nightingale’s calibre. Sam was being used to quantify The Nightingale’s ability to jump because Sam was one of the most prodigious jumpers on the circuit.

  And The Nightingale was making him look like a novice.

  He stood even further off at the second fence than he had at the first, again clearing the obstacle with a good foot of daylight between him and the birch. Everything about him seemed to be correct, the way he found his stride into the fence, the way he tucked his forelegs neatly up under him as he met it, and most of all the way he came away from the obstacles, as if he could hardly wait to get to the next one. In fact so great was his enjoyment in jumping that after he had cleared the third and last jump as perfectly and as effordessly as he had cleared the other two and Mo had pulled him up easily and sweetly at the end of the nominated stretch of ground, he gave a squeal of delight, two good-natured bucks, swung round and tanked off with his rider to hurl himself over a very solid and daunting-looking log pile that was part of Peter Nugent’s event course.

  ‘That does it!’ Peter laughed. ‘Badminton here we come!’

  ‘First things first,’ Cassie said, having calmed herself with a deep breath. ‘We have a very long way to go yet.’

  ‘What about Mo?’ Josephine asked as Peter Nugent was driving them back across his estate. ‘She’s not going to take kindly to being jocked off Nightie.’

  ‘I don’t suppose she would,’ Peter replied, ‘if she wasn’t leaving to get married to her American boyfriend next week.’

  ‘OK,’ Josephine asked her mother as they were driving away from the house. ‘So supposing I hadn’t come home.’

  ‘So supposing. I’d have found another lady rider.’